


On Brooklyn Bridge

by bringyouhometoo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, Slow Build, Spoilers for Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/pseuds/bringyouhometoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dark blue card. A date, a time, a map reference. 29 March, 1939.<br/>Amy and the Doctor and days that are theirs, and theirs alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here it is, my contribution to the sobfest that is "amy/eleven appreciation day" over on tumblr. Part One will be up tomorrow, on the actual DAY, I just wanted to get the prologue up tonight as a quick preview -- hence the ridiculously short first chapter. I'm hoping to actually finish this within a week or so. Feel free to yell at me for updates. 
> 
> MASSIVE THANK-YOUS to Spark, Christine, Kara, and Meg, who have all at one point or another contributed with beta-reading, plot niggles, and proofreading.

The card arrives on an unremarkable, greying Tuesday in March. Amy barely glances at the envelope, her name followed by the address that has become hers and Rory’s, before putting it aside and turning to the most recent letter to arrive from a publishing house.

It’s not until she’s read over her letter — yet another rejection, and she’s beginning to feel decidedly side-lined while Rory goes out and helps the wounded and the sick every day — that Amy turns to the nondescript envelope, turning it over in her hands with a slight frown.

The address is printed; there’s no handwriting to seem familiar; and yet… And then it hits her. Her name, _A. Pond._ It’s been five, six months nearly, since she saw her name written out like that; here’s she’s been _Mrs Rory _Williams__ to anyone addressing her correspondence.

She forces her hands to stop shaking before sliding one fingernail under the envelope’s seam and pulling out —

A dark blue card.

A date, a time, a map reference.

29 March, 1939.


	2. i'll try to keep my distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date. A time. A map reference. 29th March 1939.
> 
> Amy and the Doctor and the days that are theirs, and theirs alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....Apparently I lack any kind of willpower to pace my updates, so here. Part One.
> 
> MASSIVE THANK-YOUS to Spark, Christine, Kara, and Meg, who all beta'd and previewed at least parts of this one.

_29 th March, 1939. _

The wind is cold and brisk against Amy’s skin as she makes her way out onto the bridge, whipping her hair across her shoulders and tugging at the hemline of her skirt. She just wraps her coat – an old men’s overcoat of Rory’s, long and brown and protective – tighter around her shoulders, and walks on. It’s not long before she’s out over the water, eyes drawn constantly to the horizon.

She usually avoids the rivers for this very reason; the open water, the Statue of Liberty, the ferries and boats moving out to open sea beyond the city limits… Ships bound for places she will never see again, visitors and travellers and tourists going where she can’t follow.

_Stop it. You’re not bitter. You’re not._

And she truly isn’t – Amy can look at herself in the mirror every morning and tell herself that she’s happy with her choice, and know that it isn’t a lie. If given the chance, would she make the same choice all over again? Yes. But is it perfect? Well.

It’s been hard; harder than she imagined, somehow. Manhattan in the late 30s may not be as secluded or as set in its way as Leadworth was even in the late 90s, but that’s not exactly saying much. She’s been trying to find work at a publisher’s but it seems all doors are barred to her, not to mention the sheer _difficulty_ of cooking and cleaning and keeping their flat ( _apartment_ ) warm without central heating; instantly hot water; ready meals.

Still. They adapt, as best as they can. They scrape by on Rory’s salary – he’s a doctor now for real, his 21st century nurse’s education far outstripping every surgeon he’s met so far – and Amy learns to return the stares with a defiantly sunny smile. At night they explore – finding bars that seem still half-illegal, relicts of the prohibition era, where they can dance and drink and watch a show; they listen to the radio and try and keep up with what everyone around them seems to dismiss as the ‘European Situation’ and Amy has to force herself not to call Winston Churchill up _for a chat;_ they take great pleasure in following the stock markets through the Sunday newspapers, fantasising about investing in computers or televisions or mobile telephones… It’s a strange life, yes, but not a bad one.

Amy’s been so lost in thought, she almost walks past the bench; twelve from the end, on the left-hand side. She has to double back and count again, checking and double checking the notes she scribbled for herself before leaving that morning. Finally satisfied that she _can’t_ be wrong, she sits down and…waits. It’s only just gone ten in the morning; she set off as soon as Rory had left for work that morning; the note told her to be there at noon, but she’s not taking any chances.

The first hour passes surprisingly quickly – Amy never gets tired of people-watching, noticing passers-by embroiled in deep conversations or heated arguments, peering in through the windows of the _laughably_ slow cars and trams, letting her mind wander and her gaze drift out across the water. The sun warms her back through the thick coat, but the wind is still fresh. The river sparkles, dappled in sunlight, and the occasional seagull swoops by with a call that breaks the bustling sounds of the city. She thinks if they had to be confined to one city, she’s glad it’s this one.

The second hour starts to drag; Amy gets up every now and then, takes a few steps, returns to her bench and sits back down. There has been a knot of tension in the pit of her stomach for the past four weeks, and now it feels urgent and anxious, consuming her from the inside out. An hour, and she’ll know. Forty-five minutes, and she might see him again. Half an hour.

Twenty minutes. Ten. Five.

Noon comes and goes.

Amy doesn’t begin to worry straight away. She _doesn’t._ It’s not unusual for _anyone_ to be a few minutes late for something, let alone _him._ Ten minutes pass.

Then fifteen. Then twenty, and okay, _now_ she can’t help the worry that’s clawing at her insides and the bitter taste of disappointment welling up in her throat.

 _It could be Melody,_ she tells herself, for what feels like the thousandth time. _She’s got the Vortex Manipulator, and anyway she needs to give you her book. This is exactly her style._

Half an hour late now, and still Amy waits. Well, it’s not like she isn’t used to it.

So she tucks her knees up under her chin, draws the coat closely around herself, and pulls the collar up as high as it will go against the wind. Forces herself to only check her watch once every five or six minutes.

And waits.

People hurry past her, often only sparing her a perfunctory glance. Once or twice, she’s startled out of her thoughts by someone asking her if she’s all right, if she’s got somewhere to stay, if she needs help. She must look a sight, bundled up in her big brown overcoat and sitting motionless on a bench on Brooklyn Bridge.

Time passes slowly, but it passes. Soon the sun is slowly sinking behind her, and her neck is cold in the wind, and it’s been _hours,_ and the note said _noon._ Amy is refusing to check her wristwatch now; she doesn’t want to be reminded of how long it’s been.

When the traffic starts picking up again as the working day ends – cars and trams and pedestrians pouring out of Manhattan and heading home to their husbands and wives, their mothers and fathers and children, their warm homes and cooked dinners – Amy knows she can’t sit here any longer. The longer she waits, the harder it gets to leave, and she _will_ have to leave.

 _Six o’clock,_ she thinks. Six hours and no more, and that _has_ to be long enough. Whoever sent that note will either come, or they won’t; and by now she almost hopes that they – that _he_ – won’t show up at all. It would be better, surely, to accept the inevitable and go back to Rory and forget that she ever hoped –

She’s crying, Amy realises with a violent start; tears have been leaking out of the corners of her eyes and running down her cheeks, scalding hot and then cold against her skin. She forces herself to look at her watch. It’s six fifteen.

She gets to her feet, gripped by a sudden feeling that if she doesn’t leave now, she never will. She shoves her hands deep into her pockets, balling them to fists and letting her nails dig into her palms. Takes one, slow step, and then another, and another, until she’s not so much walking briskly as _running away –_

She almost pushes past him.

Almost.

But there’s something about the bony frame colliding with hers, the stillness of his body as she pulls back and makes to walk on, the height and shape and _smell_ that makes walking on impossible. Amy looks up, slowly, her eyes taking in the black boots and the dark denim trousers, the buttoned waistcoat and purple jacket – he’s lost the tweed, _oh –_ until finally reaching his face.

He’s staring at her. Wide-eyed.

And then he’s pushing past her – his shoulder knocking her ruthlessly aside – and Amy barely has time to wheel around and open her mouth to yell out some wordless protest before he’s running, _sprinting_ away.

And it’s been _months_ since she last had to run, _really_ run, but she still refuses to lose him; he ducks around clumps pedestrians, weaves between rows of cars, he runs and runs and runs, and she follows, screaming his name, heart pounding, blood roaring in her ears –

She almost makes it.

Almost.

He reaches the end of the bridge, still refusing even to _look_ back at her; rounds a corner, lightning fast, and still Amy thinks she might reach him long enough to grab his arm, make him stop, _make him look at her;_ but then she pushes past a group of slowly-walking businessmen in suits, rounds the corner, and –

There’s just the faintest sound of engines, and Amy thinks she can smell a different time and place on the wind suddenly blowing towards her, thinks she can see the air shift and shimmer in front of her eyes.

“ _Doctor_ –“

He’s gone.

***

_29 th March 1940._

The second envelope arrives exactly a year after the first.

It’s been _fine,_ Amy tells herself as she turns the dark blue card over and over in her fingers. She’s been _fine._ She went home to Rory and told him she’d gotten too cold while walking around Central Park and that she’d better just have an early night with a cup of tea. The next morning, she’d gotten up and been _fine._ This entire year, she has been definitely, completely, _absolutely fine._

Which is why it doesn’t make any sense, any sense at all, that at eleven in the morning of the 29th of March she finds herself sitting on that same bench on Brooklyn Bridge, waiting for noon again.

“Amy.”

She forces herself to keep from turning around before she’s counted, very slowly and deliberately, to thirty. Thirty seconds is long enough for a daydream to fade from view, she’s found – however hard she may have been wishing, she’s never been able to make something appear for longer than thirty seconds.

At _28,_ she’s opening her eyes; at _29,_ she’s turning on the spot; at _30,_ she’s letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

He’s _here._

“…You,” Amy manages, her voice a whisper…She can’t quite remember how to breathe.

And then she’s launching herself forward. For a moment, the Doctor flinches back, as though he’s scared she’s about to attack him with a water-pistol again (and, honestly, the thought has crossed Amy’s mind more than once); and then he’s opening his arms and wrapping them around her, pulling her close, his body warm against hers, his face buried in her shoulder and fingers curling into her hair.

For a long moment, that’s all they can stand – just clinging to each other, breathing each other in. A _year and a half,_ that’s really no time at all – she’s endured worse, waited longer, for him – but the last eighteen months have felt fatally final.

When she pulls back, eyes wet and heart burning with a kind of wild joy, Amy looks at him, really _looks._ He’s in the purple jacket again, but the ever-present bow-tie is still in place. His eyes are sparkling, too, shining with emotion and wonder and _pride,_ but all she can see is the pain etched into every line of his face.

“You look older.”

“I am.”

“ _How_ much older?”

He meets her eyes for a moment longer – and then his gaze flits away, fixing on her shoes. “Fourteen years.”

_Oh._

Amy swallows back a sob. “Fourteen years, since Winter Quay,” she half-teases. “The Doctor who waited.”

He lets out a shaky laugh. “Something like that.”

And with that – with a half-remembered joke of that night _a very long time ago in seventy years’ time,_ with a smile that echoes between them with the years that never came – every ounce of tension seems to evaporate. Suddenly it hasn’t been eighteen months, or fourteen years, or any time at all; suddenly Rory’s just gone to get coffee, and the Doctor and Amy Pond are teasing each other in the New York sunshine.

They sit, and they talk. There’s a lot to catch up on.

For a while, it feels like Amy’s mouth can hardly keep up with her thoughts, there’s so _much_ that she wants to tell him – how she found Rory; how they’ve made a life together, here, despite everything; how she’s started as an editorial assistant’s clerk at a small publishing house on just off Sixth Avenue, and how they’ve set a publishing date for _Melody Malone_ ’s novel; how she’s found a tiny café that no one ever goes to but serves the best Full English breakfast this side of the Atlantic; how much she’s been doing for herself, and how much she’s missed him.

In return, the Doctor tells her about Melody; about Vastra and Jenny and Strax, making a strange sort of life for themselves in _Victorian London,_ of all places; about how much time he spent missing her.

“I didn’t do as you said,” he says, with a small, twisted smile. “I was alone for a long time.”

Amy grips his hand, squeezes his fingers lightly.

“Better now, though,” he tells her earnestly. “I found…well. I’m not sure _who_ I found.”

He launches into a story of marching snowmen and ice nannies and an impossible girl – “She was the soufflé girl, Amy, she was _Oswin_ , except her name was Clara, and she was brilliant and kind and brave, and – and then he breaks off, suddenly pensive. “And I lost her. I couldn’t save her. _Again._ ”

At that, Amy can’t help reaching out to curl her fingers against the hair at the nape of his neck, thumb stroking gently over his skin; he gravitates towards her until his head is leaning on her shoulder and her chin is resting against his hair.

“She’s _not possible,_ ” the Doctor says, a growl of frustration entering his voice; Amy thinks maybe it’s been a long time since he had someone to just _spout his thoughts at._ “She’s Oswin, and she died, and she’s Clara, _and she died,_ and _that’s impossible._ ”

Amy breathes him in, and lets go. “Find her,” she says, and it _doesn’t hurt,_ because she _wants him to have someone._ “You ran into her twice, now go look for her again.”

This time, she thinks he might almost be ready to take her advice.

She doesn’t notice time passing until it gets cold; the wind is suddenly icy and bitter against her cheeks, and when Amy blinks, she notices that it has grown dark around them, the sunset going unnoticed as they talked.

“Doctor,“ she says eventually, interrupting his rambling monologue about the three moons of Woman Wept. He freezes mid-sentence, looking mildly surprised; and she can’t help the fond smile that tugs at her lips. “I need to go home.”

He starts; looks around. “Oh. Oh, yes,” he nods sharply, once, twice, three times. “It’s late.”

“It’s just – it’s _fine_ but if I’m out later than he is, Rory – he just fusses, and worries about where I might be, and…” Amy trails off; the fact that she didn’t tell Rory where she was today, and the fact that she knows he hates being away from her every day because she might go back to where he can’t follow, goes unsaid. The Doctor just nods, understanding implicitly.

“Right. Yes,” he says, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him. “I’ll let you get home, then, Pond.”

Something sharp twists in Amy’s insides at those words, and she can’t help blurting out one question she’d tried so hard not to ask him all afternoon. “Can I see you again?”

The Doctor gives her a long, measured look. “I can come here,” he says finally. “Every now and then. I know that now, that’s why…that’s why I had to run, last year. I couldn’t risk it before I knew, but…If I’m careful, and if I don’t interfere.” He looks away, across the water, towards the skyline of the city. “It’s….not _Manhattan,_ I can’t ever go right inside, and you couldn’t just _leave_ so this is…”

Amy waits for him to continue; when he does, it’s with that slightly lecturing, slightly excitable air that he sometimes has, the tone that all at once makes him sound like a nine-year-old and a school teacher. “Imagine two slices of bread that have each got butter on them. And the butter _has to stay on its slice of bread._ But there’s a piece of ham in the middle, that each side of butter is allowed to touch.”  
  
Amy nods, baffled. “So Brooklyn Bridge…” she begins, teasing with a light smile. “Is a slice of ham?”

He looks delighted with himself, and with her for understanding. “Exactly! This is the slice of ham, and I’m allowed to come here if I’m careful, and so are you.”

“So –“

He leans into her, takes her hand in both of his and leaning forwards until their foreheads are pressed together. Amy closes her eyes, breathes in the closeness of him, lets his words wash over her. “I can come back,” he tells her gently. “If you want me to. Once a year, on this bridge, I can….I can be allowed to see you.”

“Allowed by _who_?”

“Me,” the Doctor says quietly, his eyes burning. “Allowed by me.”

***

_29 th March 1941._

And so it goes.

Once a year, every year, they meet on the bridge. And they sit, and they talk. It’s not enough; but it is.

She never tells Rory exactly what it is she talks about with the Doctor on that bench; but he understands, has always understood, that there are some things that are too private to be shared, things that are simply theirs _, Amy and her raggedy Doctor’s._ That first year – when she came home with a light in her eyes that he claimed not to have seen once in the last eighteen months – Rory knew at once where she’d been; who she’d seen. And then it all came pouring out: the envelopes; the bridge and the bench; that awful day of waiting a year ago; seeing him, talking to him; the promise of being with him for just this one day, once a year…

She’s not sure Rory finds it as wonderful an arrangement as he tells her he does; but he understands, and he never once raises so much as a murmur of complaint. Not for the first time, she catches herself thinking that she’s never deserved someone like him.

Every year begins with the same conversation.

_“How long has it been?”_

_“Fourteen years.”_

Amy never asks the Doctor why it is that he’s waiting so long for each of her years. She thinks she understands, though; it’s penance. Penance, and…something more, something like self-preservation. The longer he can starve himself of these visits, the longer the visits will last him until she stops coming.

She’s no fool; she can see the way his eyes linger on the lines at the corners of her eyes, the grey hairs, the hint of discomfort when she sits still too long and feels a twinge in her spine. Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four… It’s not _old_ by any standards, but she knows, and he knows, that she is getting older. That no matter how long he draws out the time between each day on the bench, one day – soon, maybe, compared to his lifespan – they will…stop. He’s running to her while her life still flares brightly, and running away from the inevitable fading; really, Amy thinks, he’s never done anything else.

***

_29 th March 1942._

When the United States finally engages in the war in Europe – how strange, that a period of time so _pivotal_ to Amy’s sense of her history is a mere inconvenience here for the better part of four years – she quits her job at the publishing house, and finds work in a factory producing rifles for the military. The Doctor just _looks_ at her with sad eyes when she tells him this; and Amy raises her chin defiantly.

“It’s all right for you,” she spits, surprising herself with her own anger. “You can just swagger into the Cabinet war rooms and _talk to people._ I’m stuck here, and no one’s exactly going to listen. There are people being murdered, and I want to help make it stop.”

He doesn’t argue with her, but a few weeks later Amy finds herself being contacted by the New York offices of the British secret services; and soon she’s intercepting and decoding messages, dealing in secrets and life-or-death information.

***

_29 th March 1943._

She’s not naïve enough not to know who made the calls; and the next year, she tries to thank him.

“I didn’t do anything,” he tells her, with his proud little smile.

“ _Doctor._ ”

“All right, so I _might_ have let Winston know an old friend of ours was in New York – and that she wanted to help –“

Amy hugs him tightly, laughing despite herself; and she thinks she’d like to see Winston again; maybe, one day after all this is over and he comes to visit, she’ll try and sneak her way into one of his state dinners.

***

_29 th March 1944._

In return for her stories of this new life she’s made for herself, the Doctor tells her a little bit about Clara, in sporadic drips and drabs of information. It’s never a lot – Amy thinks it might be some misguided attempt to be _tactful,_ of all things – but it’s enough. He’s starting to learn how to trust someone again; he’s seeing new stars and civilisations and wonders; he’s not alone. So Amy listens to the Doctor’s stories – the day he and Clara got trapped on a Russian submarine with a war criminal from Mars, or the time he went and watched her parents meet, or the day she saves his life by telling a story to a sun god.

With every story, it hurts a little less; their lives don’t run the same now, the Time Lord and the woman living her life in New York, and that’s…all right.

Amy thinks she would like Clara, in another time.

***

_29 th March 1945._

With the war all but over – Amy’s been decoding surrender negotiations and victory preparations for weeks now, ostensibly simply transcribing them and passing them on _without really reading them,_ but…well. She’s not going to just _forget_ a message like that – Amy arrives late from a night shift to find the Doctor already waiting for her on their bench.

She approaches slowly, not wanting to disturb him; he’s reading, and looks lost in thought. The round reading glasses perched on his nose seem _far_ too familiar to her, and she can’t help the bubble of half-happy sadness that wells up inside her, threatening to burst. For a while, all she does is watch him. And then he looks up, seeing her instantly; his face splits into a smile of real, open and honest, joy.- and it’s been a year for her, and _fourteen_ for him, but Amy runs to hug him as though it’s only been a day or two. They’ve always been like this, she thinks; waiting for each other and then picking up right where they left off. So much about them has changed, whether it be circumstances of time or place, marriages, ‘deaths’, or that strange morning where she woke up and had never known him but knew she’d forgotten someone so, _so_ , important - but not the way they are. They just… _fit_.

They simply share stories that year; happy stories, light stories, the odd, wistful memory of Vincent or of the Starwhale or the day the TARDIS talked to them. There’s been so much pain and suffering around Amy these last few years, she’s grateful, indescribably grateful, for the few short hours of sunlight and hope.

_***_

_29 th March 1946._

A year later, conversely, with the war over and the world beginning to breathe again, Amy thinks the Doctor should be happier than he is. She’s been good, _really_ good, for the first time in a while, working for the publisher again, finally starting to write something approaching what she might one day turn into a novel. Rory’s been promoted, his tireless efforts during the war years not going unnoticed. They’ve moved into a slightly larger apartment in a slightly nicer neighbourhood, and Amy thinks he might be planning on asking her what she’d think about adoption. The thought sends shivers of fear and excitement running down her spine, warm and icy cold in equal measures.

“I missed you,” she confesses, allowing herself a rare moment of sentimentality; the long hours, the ceaseless stream of news about pain and death and unimaginable horror, have worn on her soul.

The Doctor’s answer is immediate, too fast not to come completely and defencelessly from the heart. “I miss you every day.”

It sounds like an apology. Amy turns to him, the question already forming on her lips; he nods, with a small, sad smile. She pulls his hand into her lap wordlessly, wrapping her fingers around his and waiting for him to speak.

“I lost her,” he whispers, eyes fixed on their interlocked hands. “I am…so sorry, Amelia.”

Amy doesn’t have to ask who _she_ is; there is only one loss he could be apologising to her for. Somewhere, maybe far in the future or unimaginably long ago, on some distant star…her daughter has died.

They don’t say much of anything else, that day. He holds her, and she holds him, and they mourn. Mourn a wife, mourn a daughter – those strangely _linear_ labels that have never made sense in Amy’s life – mourn together for the woman who was unimaginably important to them both.

“Will you see her again?” Amy asks quietly, into the silence. “A younger her, I mean?”

The Doctor shrugs; shakes his head; nods. “I don’t know” he tells her, the hope in his voice palpable and desperate. “I don’t know.”

Amy just nods, gripping his hand tighter in hers, letting the pain well up and sink down inside her. She’s not reacting yet, not _really_ – the worst of it will come in a few months, with the Doctor long gone, on a night where Rory is working late and she remembers with a start how alone she is. For now, she is strong enough (or numb enough) to be the steady anchor; to provide some small comfort.

When she goes home that night, Amy tells Rory she’s been thinking they might look into adopting a baby.  
  
***

_29 th March 1947._

“Anthony,” she tells the Doctor, a year later to the day, watching with a smile as he crouches over her pram. “He’s called Anthony. Tony for short.”

“Hmmm,’ the Doctor frowns, leaning dangerously far into the pram and cocking his ear towards the quietly-gurgling infant. “Tony. Yes, he likes that. Well done.”

Amy laughs, her heart contracting with warmth and love and joy as she watches the two of them, eyes flickering from the Doctor’s face to Tony’s and back again. “Thank you.”

“I’m serious!” the Doctor tells her, looking earnest. “A lot of parents choose really quite _stupid_ names for their babies, names the babies don’t even _like._ But Tony likes being Tony. I think he likes having you.”

“I like having him, too,” Amy smiles, remembering that strange, first day, her and Rory coming home from the children’s home with a _three month old child_ that’s suddenly and completely _theirs._

“Can I?“ The Doctor gestures vaguely towards the pram, and Amy nods with a surprised grin; he is gentle, indescribably gentle, picking Tony up and cradling him against his chest. “Aaaah.”

Amy doesn’t think she can take much more of this; doesn’t know how much more happiness she is allowed. Nine years ago, when she stood in that graveyard on the worst day of her life, had she ever imagined this? Had she _ever_ let herself imagine having a baby, or ever seeing the Doctor again, or getting to _see the Doctor hold her son_ and croon Gallifreyan nonsense in his ear? No; she would never have dared to dream quite so big.

She thinks, suddenly, senselessly, that this is…too much. That her story was never supposed to have an ending like this. That this is only a reprieve, the calm before some new storm set to tear her world apart.

Still. It’s hard not to hope, and simply allow herself to feel _indescribably lucky,_ sitting on a bench in the warm spring sunshine with the Doctor and watching baby Tony kick his legs and smile.  
  
***

_29 th March 1948._

“You know,” Amy says to the Doctor, in a rare moment of peace; Tony’s been demanding their constant attention for the last few hours now, and she doesn’t think they’ve been able to exchange more than the odd snippet of conversation all afternoon. “Rory could come, next year.”

The Doctor goes oddly still, and Amy _forces_ herself not to read anything into his expression.

“I just meant…” she offers, biting her lip. “He knows I see you, you know that, right? And I think he’d really like to see you. He’s missed you – missed everything – as well, actually.”

The Doctor smiles, quietly and with his face turned slightly away. “Rory the Roman,” he muses. “I’ve missed him too. Both of you, the Ponds together.”

“ _Williams,_ ” Amy chides gently; but she has to laugh when the Doctor simply shakes his head.

“Ponds.”

There is a slight pause; and then Amy presses on. “So –“ the Doctor looks back at her, his expression unreadable. “Could he?”

He pauses, apparently bracing himself for her reaction. “…No.”

“ _No_?”

“No,” the Doctor repeats, quietly, apologetically, fervently. “No, it was…always a risk, you know, me coming here at all. We can only meet here like this because—“

“The slice of ham, yes,” Amy interrupts, rolling her eyes; she’s not sure she’s in the mood for a sandwich-based metaphor. “I remember. So why can’t _Rory_ —“

“It was only ever him the Angels wanted, Amy,” the Doctor whispers, his face closed off. “Not you, not me…Rory. They chose him, and they didn’t let him go. They never really wanted you, you could easily…well, not easily, you can’t _leave,_ but we can – bend the chains keeping you here, just a little, just enough for this one day. _You_ – you chose.”

The pain that colours that last word is so sharp it may as well come like a physical blow. She _chose_ …Now _there’s_ a thought Amy hasn’t confronted in a while.

***

_29 th March 1949._

She asks Rory to mind Tony for the day this time; doesn’t think it does her any good, seeing the Doctor and Tony together.  The last few months…well.

The Doctor’s words rang in her ears for far longer than she would care to admit. _You…chose._

She thinks he could have loved her, once.

Maybe she could have loved him.

She knows she can’t quite stomach seeing him with her son like this, year on year.

“No Tony today?” The Doctor asks, looking slightly crestfallen; Amy forces down the tangle of emotions in her chest and tells him all about how Rory’s running his own surgery now, how they’ve bought Tony a little toy medical kit and how he seems to be taking so much after _Rory_ – his mannerisms and gestures, his first attempts at forming his own sentences, even his habit of pulling at the hair behind his left ear – it’s sometimes almost hard to believe he’s not theirs by blood.

***

_29 th March 1950._

They share a birthday cake with ten candles – Amy debated making the Doctor attempt to blow out _one hundred and forty_ but decided against that inevitable icing-related disaster – and throw crumbs to the seagulls.

“Funny,” Amy mumbles, through half a mouthful of cake and starting to laugh at herself before she can quite form the word completely. The Doctor sniggers, wiping a stray speck of strawberry jam from her chin, raising his eyebrows at her valiant attempts to clear her throat. “…Shut up.”

“Wasn’t saying anything, Pond.”

“Still shut up.”

He grins, helping himself to more cake, and waits for her to finish chewing before prompting her on with an encouraging “Well, funny what?”

“Just…” Amy shrugs. “Seeing you like this. Once a year, every year, on the same day every single year…”

“Yes?”

“It’s nice,” she smiles, looking down at her fingernails for lack of a better place to focus her eyes on. “Knowing exactly when you’ll be back.”

“I won’t stop, you know,” he tells her, after a short, slightly strained pause during which she could almost _hear_ him understand the intention behind her words. “I’ll keep coming back no matter _how_ bored you get of sitting on a bench with me.”

Amy looks up then, grinning and shaking her head. “Not gonna happen.”

_***_

_29 th March 1951_

Amy is late, later than she’s ever been for the bench; by the time she finally reaches Brooklyn Bridge, it’s almost two in the afternoon.

The Doctor starts towards her as soon as he sees her, pulling her towards him by one hand, his face in equal parts stony and relieved. “Where _were_ you?”

“…Sorry.”

“Amy.”

She shakes her head, avoiding his eyes, and slowly sits down. “Just…took a bit longer getting here, that’s all. Sorry.”

“ _Amelia.”_

Amy stares down at her feet, feeling her lungs struggling to keep up with her pounding heart; the last few minutes, when she got impatient and started running, weren’t wise.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she mutters, clenching her hands into tight fists. “I just got a bit – side-tracked.”

“Side-tracked?”

She shrugs him off defiantly, refusing to engage – and then his arm is around her, and he’s pulling her close, and _oh_.

Amy feels his entire body go rigid as he processes the bony shoulder, the slender, frail frame, the brittle, limp hair that once shone brighter than sunflowers.

And then she’s shaking with tears she’s been _refusing_ to let spill, and he’s holding her so _gently,_ as if he’s afraid she’ll fall apart and dissolve into atoms at any moment, and it’s not long before he’s coaxed the entire story out of her.

The pains in her chest that started almost six months ago, and the sudden strange bouts of illness and the never-ending need for _more sleep._

The eventual trips to the hospital; the kindly-faced doctors who broke the news to her. The slow, awful realisation of what this means, here, in a time where _antibiotics_ are still something mystifying and unexplored, where the doctors might try shooting some radiation in her general direction but no one’s holding out a great deal of hope.

Almost as soon as she’s finished talking, the Doctor starts planning how he’s going to _fix this._

“I could get you something – from New Earth, they do portable remedies—“

“No.”

“Amy, it’s quite safe for humans, it would make you better, I promise—“

“ _No,_ Doctor.” When he just looks at her, wild-eyed and still with fear, she sighs and shrugs. “I think…I think that would probably count as _interfering,_ don’t you?”

“If I—“

“Doctor. This is the life I’m supposed to live, it’s not…there’s nothing I want you to do.”

He draws one long, shaky breath…And nods; understands that this, finally, is a choice she can make for herself, and _only_ for herself.

“Besides,” Amy half-laughs. “I just have to hang on long enough for chemo to get rolled out to actual hospitals, Rory reckons it should only be another few years.”

The Doctor visibly winces at those words – and then, just as visibly, pulls himself together and forces a laugh. “There, you see? Nothing to worry about.”

They spend their remaining hours talking _very_ _resolutely_ about the future; he makes Amy promise to bring Tony along some time, and she tells him about the book she’s writing, and how she and Rory are going to go see _Elvis_ play his first New York gig soon, and how they’re already planning on going to see the Beatles at least a dozen times…

But Amy can feel herself getting tired, and it’s a long walk back to her flat; and she doesn’t want to let on, somehow, how much it’s going to cost her simply to walk down the bridge and out of sight of the Doctor without stopping for breath.

“I’ll see you next year,” she tells him, hugging him tightly.

“You better.”

“That’s a promise, okay?” Amy says, stepping back and pulling her lips into a stubborn smile. “See you soon, Doctor.”

He smiles back, raising a hand and brushes a strand of hair out of her face. “Until next time, then, Amelia Pond.”


End file.
